What would you have done?

So yesterday we had a room's door lock stop working. Wouldn't accept house keeping keys or guest keys. We figured this out, called the room to make sure the guy and his kids weren't stuck in there and then called him on his cell phone to let him know we were going to move him across the hall to a room that had a working door. He comes back to move his stuff after which he told me it would be no problem and that he understood.

So he comes in and is like "Is there a way I can get a night comp'd for the inconvenience?" I looked at him over my glasses and said "You'd have to speak to a manager about that."

So he goes up to his old room (which by this point has been opened) and gets his stuff and puts it in the new room. He leaves and goes on about the rest of his day.

So today as he's checking out he's like "So did anyone decide if I can get one of my nights comp'd because we had to move?" I looked at him again and said "You're still going to have to speak to a manager about that sir." "Oh okay," he mumbles as he takes his receipt. He says bye and goes out of the hotel.

My head housekeeper comes to the desk and I explain to her what he wanted for "having to move rooms." I told her that I feel that he is not entitled because we handled it early enough in the day so he didn't wait for hours for someone to come unlock the door so he could get in the room. She says "The housekeeper found the problem, not the guest. We took care of it quickly and made sure we put him in a room that worked. I wouldn't give him anything since there was really no inconvenience to him."

So that's how we both feel and I'm curious about what other people think? Am I just being crabby about honoring my brand's 100%? Though he didn't ask for it in so many words, but at my location that decision has to come from one of my higher ups.

Edited to update: Yesterday he called and wanted to speak to my gm who was in a conference call. When he finished, I explained what the guy wanted and my position about the refund. My gm mulled it over and had me comp him one night with the though being that we want him to come back and it is not worth fighting with the guy over one night. I did it and I guess I can see his point, but it still makes me irritated with my head engineer who was supposed to come in that night and fix that door so we could resell the room the next day and he didn't bother according to head housekeeper.

Yeah, it didn't happen to them while they were in the middle of getting ready for some event, or leave a kid stuck in a room, or anything like that. There was a minor inconvenience, and they had to move their things, but other than that, nothing worth the whole night.

He might actually murder me :D He's not a bad GM and most of the time he can see your side and whatnot, but yesterday he just wanted to get out of here and go home. I can see his point honestly, but I think the whole night is crazy. Half would have been fine, but I did what I was told to do.

how was the door not working? was it the battery? was no engineer around to replace it in the 15 minutes it would have taken?

and when he asked about the comp/discount did you inform management about it to reach out to the guest?

the guest did have to remove all of his belongings and bring them to another room, comping the room would me a lot, but points or vouchers to the restaurant or even some money off would have been a good idea. unless you were able to move his belongings over for him.

It was the inner door working. It needed to be recoded to accept the master keys and guest keys to work. The batteries had just been changed. Our full time engineer does not work weekends, so our full time public space person had to try to fix the door.

I left a note in our communications log about the guest request for a discount. I also advised the guest to call the hotel on Monday when my gm would be here to speak to as well.

He had like one bag. We caught the issue not the guest. We would have been happy to move it, but our head housekeeper still wanted to reach out to the guest to let him know and give him the option of moving his own belongings. We don't have a restaurant and I have no vouchers to give out!

Usually if we have to move a guest in the middle of the stay, I try to get a discount for one night approved by management before talking to the guest and let the guest know at the time of moving, "hi, I'm sorry, we need to ask you to move, but I've already gotten it approved to give you a (insert discount amount) discount on tonight's rate for the inconvenience."

Where he was already here on a discounted rate, I couldn't very well discount it anymore. I have no managers here on a weekend and didn't want to bother them with this issue as I was going to put it in the communications log. If he'd been here with the rack rate, I would have definitely done what you suggested, but couldn't discount the rate any farther.

If your tale is correct, the inconvenience it caused the guest is that they had to move rooms. Which is pretty minor. If that happened to me as a guest, I'd notice the inconvenience, but would be satisfied with someone on the hotel staff apoligizing for it. And any offer of compensation (Free breakfast, free wifi for a day, something like that.) would be appreciated.

But I can understand where your guest is coming from. Good chance that if he actually takes the time to speak to your manager he WILL get a night comped. "The squeeky wheel gets the grease", and all. Anything to avoid a negative review!

I'm happy for you he stayed polite about it the whole time. Speaks well of him too. But if he'd made a scene there and then, your manager would've gotten involved sooner, and probably would've comped him the night right then.

What a good way to get bedb- err, cupcakes coming home with you. The only thing I unpack from my suitcase are my fursuit (if I'm at a convention) and toiletries (which stay in the bag). Nothing goes in drawers or on the closet floor or shelf.

That is how the interaction went, I swear! While I agree he should have received something, I didn't think comping the night was it. He was here on a discounted rate, he'd already left the property so didn't discover the problem himself, we'd already started fixing it when housekeeping alerted me to alert him that he'd have to move, I did offer the help of the housekeeper to move his belongings across the hall which he declined and decided to come back and move himself which took him all of five minutes, and we apologized on the phone, in person, and while our housekeeper assigned his room helped him move the stuff.

My GM would not have been pleased if I'd called him on the weekend to ask about comping the room, given that he was at the lake and wouldn't have been able to call back while I was on shift. He did get the night comped yesterday by me per my GMs wishes though.

As a guest- I wouldn't expect a free night, but throwing in some incidental like bottled water or a free movie rental (excluding adult stuff bc no.) or breakfast for the next day if it's not included would be nice. Minor inconvenience or not- it's. Still an inconvenience and it doesn't matter if the guest is getting ready for an event, their time is still worth something.

That said, none of the above are required (esp considering you caught it before it was a serious problem for him)- but considering he asked about it twice it clearly bothered him at least a little bit.

But if it were me, I probably wouldn't have blinked and just switched, as long as you were not trying to put me next to the pool or ice machine. ;)

He definitely could have asked to have some free waters, if he'd wanted them. I'm not sure what he had been doing when he left the property, he'd told me earlier it was "guys weekend" with his three sons, but they didn't come back when I called him to move his belongings. We don't do movie rentals at this hotel, so unfortunately that option wouldn't have occurred to me as it would have been impossible to follow through on. Breakfast is included at my hotel, so no go on giving him free breakfast. I had to put him near the ice machine, as he wanted a room close to the elevator! You're format is fine to me friend!

Yeah I mean I would have just offered something up front so that way he wouldn't have really had an opportunity to ask for something.Especially a free night.That just seems excessive.At this point though, (because nothing was even offered) if he's a special snowflake member then he will probably call the snowflake line and get a free stay anyway.

If you offer points to rewards members, I would have apologized, and offered points. I would have also reached out to management that he asked for a possible comp or discount, and once approved I would have called the guest and informed him we provided points, a discount, yada yada. Maybe check with your team and figure out different levels of compensation for guest issues, from small to larger forms of compensation.

He wasn't a member and he was on a discounted rate. My GM and FOM and Sales Director are the ones that make calls on discounting rates due to stay issues. None of them were on when this all went down. I did what I could do at the level of worker I am in the hive.

I had to move a family of 2 adults & 2 kids down the hall this past weekend, and they had been checked in to the room for probably 2+ hours. I had to ask them to move bc we needed the room for a disabled guest, so it was def an inconvenience to these people. They were SUPER nice & totally understanding about it, so I offered them free breakfast in the restaurant the next morning bc it was our fault (well technically central res's fault for not putting the damn notes in the reservation).

For your dude, I would have taken off the $20/night resort fee. Free night? HA.

Oh jeeze! Yes that definitely sucks worse than my guy! Where he was on a discounted rate, I couldn't discount it farther because it shows up on a report for night audit and on my sales directors report that gets submitted to parent company. He did get the night comp'd per my Gm.

Our staff has been trained to throw points at them, especially the high tier members. At the end of the day, that's what those types want. For those who aren't rewards members, we're allowed to offer up to 20% off their stay, but we have to start our offer at 10%. This issue was handled promptly and the guest wasn't really inconvenienced, aside from having to move his belongings alllll the way across the hall, I wouldn't have offered him anything more than a sincere apology.

I wish I could have, but as I've already stated he was on a discounted rate and not a member and everything is included with the rate, so there was no comping anything or giving freebies. But my GM did have me comp him one night yesterday.